Last week I had seen in Twitter some bitching about binary triggers, but I filtered it out because there is always somebody doomsaying about anything guns and it is simply boring.  Doing my morning reading of blogs, I bumped into the news that a man by the name of Mohamad Barakat was shot and killed in North Dakota and he was probably about to commint a terrorist attack on unsupecting people at a local fair.

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — The heavily armed man who ambushed Fargo police officers investigating a fender bender last week likely had a bigger and bloodier attack in mind, with at least two fairs taking place at the time in and around North Dakota’s largest city, authorities said Friday.

Mohamad Barakat killed one officer and wounded two others and a bystander before a fourth officer shot and killed him, ending the July 14 attack.

Over the past five years, Barakat, 37, searched the internet for terms including “kill fast,” “explosive ammo,” “incendiary rounds,” and “mass shooting events,” state Attorney General Drew Wrigley said Friday during a news conference in Fargo, a city of about 125,000 people. But perhaps the most chilling search was for “area events where there are crowds,” which on July 13 brought up a news article with the headline, ”Thousands enjoy first day of Downtown Fargo Street Fair.”
…
After driving by the fender bender, Barakat pulled into an adjacent parking lot to watch from his parked car, Wrigley said. He said Barakat’s car was loaded with guns, a homemade grenade, more than 1,800 rounds of ammunition, three “largish” containers full of gasoline, plus two propane tanks, one completely filled and the other half-filled not with propane, but with “explosive materials concocted at home, purchased lawfully.”
…
With police and firefighters busy helping, Barakat watched for several minutes until the officers walked by him, when he lifted a .223-caliber rifle out of his car window and began firing, Wrigley said.

The rifle had a binary trigger that allowed it to fire so rapidly that it sounded like an automatic weapon, he said. A binary trigger is a modification that allows a weapon to fire one round when the trigger is pulled and another when it is released — in essence doubling a gun’s firing capacity. The three officers who were shot had no time to react and fell in rapid succession. He also shot and wounded a fleeing woman, Karlee Koswick, who had been involved in the fender bender, he said.

Man who ambushed Fargo officers likely had bigger and bloodier attack in mind, attorney general says | AP News

This combo of explosives, arson devices and guns reminds me of Columbine. The intention of assholes Harris and Klebold was to kill as many as possible with two propane-based firebombs and then shoot people as they evacuated the school.  They had to go back inside and create their havoc we know associate with School Shootings because their devices failed to detonate.

But it is inconvenient that the almost Mass Shooter/Terrorist was of the wrong Pantone code of skin and protected national origin. So, about the only thing worth emphasizing is the binary trigger rather than the duplication of the original Columbine planning or the fact that he had explosives made at home and ready to use. I do not know if the device was viable, but we will eventually going to hear of that one asshole that got it right.

It did happen before

And it really does not take much, just about a couple of bucks of gasoline and a lighter.

Happy Land Social Club arson.